Yesterday a friend of mine sent me a text with a photo taken by a guide we both know of a "hero" shot of a client gilling a beautiful 40 inch chromer from the Klamath. It is just me, but I personally feel like gilling a fish, especially in a picture, is uncouth - akin maybe to placing the severed head of your vanquished enemies on spikes. LOL

But this, as I saw, was a wild fish. My understanding, even after trying to read the booklet yesterday without nodding off, is not allowed anywhere in CA. Do I have this right - can you harvest wild Steelhead anywhere on the Klamath? Ever? Of course this is a whole different issue than whether you should abuse them in that way, which is probably just me being pissy.

No wild steelhead may be harvested in any CA streams; the Smith was the last holdout, couple years ago IIRC. Wish it were illegal to remove them from the water. Post the picture, we can "shame" the guide; he should know better.

Agreed. If I use that guide I will tell him that while I personally do not want any Steelhead I catch, wild or hatchery, to be harvested, if a wild one gets harvested in my presence I will never use him as a guide again. We really could have used that beautiful fishes DNA in the gene pool!

I'm not ready to re-post any picture or shame anyone, especially without knowing the "whole story". I suppose that gilling a fish is not illegal, and harmful as it can be, the fish might have been put back. The full weight of the fish is hanging from the head, and there appears to be some torn red gill material on the outside of the fish here his hands is. So the spirit of the rule, if not the exact letter seems violated. He is in a boat, with a big net, so it would seem that there were other choices. It just saddens me immensely, I suppose more for what it represents than for that one specific fish.

I guess there are some wild fish you can take on the lower Rogue. One day when we came back skunked we got to talking to some plunkers that had caught a bunch of fish (*sigh*), and we were laughing together because they were complaining about all the wild steelhead they were catching. Apparently they are allowed to harvest "only" 4 wild ones per year there, so they really want to catch the hatchery fish.

From the Regulations, page 32:https://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.a...D=93497&inline
"All wild steelhead caught must be released unharmed."
"Do not squeeze the fish or touch its eyes or gills."
"try to avoid removing the fish from the water."
Pretty clear that what this guide did was illegal, and unethical as well.